With less than six months to the end of the National Broadband Plan (2020-2025), Nigeria is on the verge of missing its 70 per cent broadband penetration target. Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wave5Wireless, Ayọ‌wándé Adálémọ, in an interview with ADEYEMI ADEPETUN, said the challenges dwarfing the sector’s growth are rooted in policy inconsistency and lack of innovation among Internet service providers (ISPs).

There are claims that the Nigerian ISP space is challenging. What is the problem within the space?
The number one reason is the stagnant business model nearly all of them follow. It is a kick-and-follow model; I buy bandwidth from a provider like MainOne or Globacom and then I resell it, typically as fibre-to-the-home. We largely copy and paste European or American standards without adapting them to our unique environment. This same business model has been in use for the last 30 years and nothing has changed. Some ISPs will not even consider deploying to a street unless they can sign up 20 subscribers first. They are not being innovative enough.
 
Times are changing. People are mobile and nomadic; they don’t want to be tied to their homes. ISPs need to redefine what an “Internet service” is and who their customer is. The definition of an SME has evolved from a brick-and-mortar shop to a woman selling hair on Instagram. She is an SME, and she needs to access the Internet. The question for an ISP should be: What solutions can I deliver to that SME? Where can she reach me, and what value-added services can I provide to enable her business?
  
We think from the customer back to the network, not the other way around. Others build a network for an estate and stop there. We ask what the customer wants and where they are—in the market, at the bus stop, in a restaurant—and we aim to be waiting there for them. But we don’t just offer the Internet; we offer a service they can’t refuse. We partner with companies like ShowMax, which struggle because users must first buy expensive data to watch their content. Through integration, their customers become our customers, and we solve a major pain point for both.
   
The lack of innovation is compounded by other issues: vandalism, the high cost of equipment, difficult access to funding, and multiple layers of regulation and taxation. There is no ISP in Nigeria with a million subscribers, which is a sad reality. Wave5Wireless is poised to be the first. The key is for ISPs to embrace collaboration and the shared economy as strengths instead of viewing everyone as a competitor. We built a neutral host platform where anyone can plug in and grow with us.

How do you see Nigeria’s broadband journey, especially the race towards 70 per cent penetration by the end of the year?
IT is not all about copying and pasting what the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) says all the time. ITU said this is a standard. Nigeria needs to distil that standard and ask what works for us. The Minister for Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani has said that he wants to do 90,000 kilometres of fibre across the country. Great idea. But is that exactly what Nigeria needs?
   
As Africans, have we collaborated enough locally? I know there are co-location sites, I know there are co-location towers, but in terms of physical infrastructure like fibre, we have disparate networks.
   
NCC just sent a letter to all the ISPs now to say if you are doing fibre, write to us, and show your plan because there are so many fibre optic cables everywhere. In Lagos, it is almost becoming an eyesore. You will see aerial fibre flying everywhere, and the streets are untidy. But imagine if the Federal Government, the NCC and the Minister of Communications said let’s do an audit of every single person that has deployed fibre, no matter how short, even if it’s just one metre. What are you using this fibre for? What traffic passes on it? And then we go back to the Infraco licences.
  
And we hand over this fibre infrastructure to the Infracos, be it Wi-Fi wireless or fixed infrastructure, we hand it over to them. It still belongs to us, but they manage access, deployment, and manage traffic on it. And then we ask NSCDC to become the de facto protector of this infrastructure nationwide, and with that, so many things will happen.
  
First of all, we are creating jobs. Second, we are bringing sanity into the system. Then we will begin to see where the gaps are.
  
Are there gaps in the universities? No market in Nigeria has high-speed Internet. I know the former minister, Isa Pantami, tried to do that during his tenure, but nothing substantial was achieved.
   
No market has high-speed Internet access as we speak. And these are underserved areas. Where are the gaps? Once you identify the gaps, the rest is history. Then what are we doing with this broadband access? So, mining communities, as an example, what will broadband do to them? What will broadband do to a teaching hospital? How will broadband serve a primary school? We need to distil that knowledge and begin to apply our needs.
   
Maybe we don’t need 70 per cent coverage. Maybe we need to fill the gaps. Because in those gaps are clusters of millions of people. If we could serve those millions every day, we would have been able to create a plan that serves Nigerians. But when we have a broad 70 per cent coverage in the city and 10 per cent in the villages, there are still gaps.

Nigeria lacks ubiquitous Wi-Fi facilities, which are virtually everywhere abroad. Why is that infrastructure scarce in the country?
FROM my perspective, it should be a policy-making thing. For instance, the government can say if you’re building a public space, a restaurant, no matter how small, you must have a minimum amount of access, policies that say that if you’re building an international conference centre, there must be Internet access there, and this is a standard almost everywhere.
  
You must have structure cabling, you must have fibre, you must have all of those things. Over there, they ensure that their people can connect wherever.  
   
Secondly is the knowledge gap. There is a lot of misconception when it comes to telecom in Nigeria. We just grab technology that the West promotes as the best technology in the world and bring it down here because it serves the masses without thinking and picking the best of what they have also deployed there.
   
There is a need for the government to open up space, and allow people to deploy infrastructure competitively. As I said earlier, our ISPs are not innovating. If ISPs were innovating, as I roll up my fibre across Lagos, I would ensure that I partner with quick-service restaurants so that there’s some capacity uptake at intermittent places across the city. We have lots of policies in this country, well documented but there’s no enforcement, no one to implement them.

Could you explain the transition from Oxygen Broadband to Wave5Wireless?
Oxygen Broadband was a venture ahead of its time, but it was a different entity with a different set of investors. Wave5Wireless is an entirely new organization that I founded and Biola Akinyemi joined me as a co-founder in 2021.
  
The business models are also fundamentally different. Oxygen Broadband was focused exclusively on providing public Wi-Fi and data access. Wave5Wireless is also centred on Wi-Fi, but we are elevating it from a simple data access tool into a comprehensive service and utility delivery system. Our goal is to ensure that the moment a user connects to our Wi-Fi, every service and utility they might need is immediately available. We are creating a platform where many essential services can be accessed without needing a data plan. For example, in Nigeria, you still have to pay for data even just to buy a new data bundle, which is a significant challenge. Wave5Wireless is turning Wi-Fi into a service delivery mechanism so millions of Nigerians can access critical services, whether they have data or not.

What were the identified challenges when Wave5Wireless officially started operations?
We started in 2015, initially delivering enterprise services to the media, entertainment, oil, and gas sectors. However, we consciously decided not to follow the path of other ISPs, which is essentially just buying and reselling bandwidth. We wanted to bring real innovation to the table just as I did with Oxygen Broadband.
  
In 2020, we approached the Lagos State Government with a proposal to deploy Wi-Fi at bus stops, bringing innovation to the transport sector. We knew that over 500,000 commuters use the BRT system daily, many in underserved areas with poor connectivity. Our goal was to solve two problems: provide high-speed connectivity for these commuters and enable the delivery of intelligent transport systems for the state.
  
In 2021, the government granted us two bus terminals for a pilot: Ikorodu Terminal and TBS. We wanted to test two things: first, if people could conveniently connect and enjoy high speeds, and second, what could be effectively distributed over the network. We started with advertising, getting 40 SMEs to place their ads on the network at no cost, while users also connected for free. The idea was to turn the Wi-Fi portal into a digital billboard, connecting SMEs directly with consumers at a critical point of intersection.
  
The results were phenomenal. During the 150-day trial, we recorded over one million connections at just those two locations. For the advertisers, we delivered 2.9 million impressions, which far exceeded what they might get from other digital platforms.  This success showed us we were onto something important. We observed behavioural changes; commuter frustration eased because they had good internet while waiting. We also saw a significant positive impact on the 40 SMEs, who gained many new customers. This proved that if we can distribute advertising, we can also distribute movies, and music and create a hyperlocal market for all kinds of content, services and utilities.
   
Today, our deployment is ongoing daily. We are now live at 15 bus stops. We are also in two key markets: Sabo market in Yaba and Iponri market in Surulere. Our concession with LAMATA allows us to be at every single bus shelter and terminal they operate, and our high-speed network also helps power the innovations LAMATA is bringing to the transport system at an affordable cost.

Connectivity at this scale requires a major backhaul provider. With which of the telcos are you partnering?
We are not doing this alone. While buying capacity from Glo 1, the company recognised the immense opportunity in our model, leading to a strategic partnership. Telecom operators consistently spend huge sums on network optimization to combat congestion, which is a major issue in Nigeria due to our population density. In key areas like markets, cellular networks are often terrible; you see people at Balogun or Aspamda markets having to step outside to get a POS transaction to go through. The economic impact of this network congestion is estimated at $200 million yearly, not to mention the optimization costs for operators. 33
  
Glo saw that if our solution worked this well, they could partner with us to solve network congestion for our combined users. Now, Glo customers and even non-customers can connect to the Wi-Fi network, offloading traffic from the strained cellular network. This frees up cellular capacity for voice calls and ensures users on the Wi-Fi experience fantastic speeds. So going forward, you will increasingly see “Glo Wi-Fi powered by us” across the nation. When a user buys a data bundle from Glo, it will grant them access to both the cellular network and our Wi-Fi network simultaneously. Your phone will automatically switch to the Glo Wi-Fi network when in a zone and switch back to mobile data when you leave. For the user, this offers significant cost savings, especially with the recent 50 per cent tariff increase approved by the NCC that has caused many users to drop off the Internet.

Given the security concerns around public Wi-Fi, what is the level of your security architecture?
OUR security architecture is robust and multi-layered. The core resides in the cloud, where we use the highest level of encryption to protect user data and access. On the physical network, we have three distinct levels of security: Client Isolation: Our access points can support over 1,024 simultaneous users. On a standard access point, this would allow one user to “sniff” another’s data. However, our client isolation feature makes this impossible.

Dynamic VLANs: When a user connects, they are assigned to a unique Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN). If you are on VLAN one, another user might be on VLAN 13. If you log out and log back in, you could be on VLAN 32. You can never tell which VLAN you are on at any point. There is also robust firewall system that only accepts IP addresses generated by our system for a specific user. If you attempt to connect with an unauthorized IP from elsewhere, the network will block you.

Considering the challenges and opportunities you’ve laid out, what is your direct message to investors looking at Nigeria’s digital infrastructure space?
MY message is clear: the old models have failed. The opportunity in Nigeria is not in funding another traditional ISP that copies and pastes Western models. The true, scalable opportunity lies in funding a new category of infrastructure that solves fundamental problems for millions of Nigerians and the entire telecommunications ecosystem.

Wave5Wireless is not a plan on paper; it is a proven model with validated demand. In a 150-day pilot at just two Lagos bus stops, we organically generated over one million user connections and 2.9 million ad impressions. We have solved the go-to-market challenge through a landmark partnership with Globacom, giving us immediate access to millions of subscribers and a national distribution channel. We have de-risked deployment through our strategic concession with the Lagos State government.

We have built a business with diversified revenue streams that go far beyond just selling data. Our financial projections, based on this validated model, show a clear path to reaching 10 million weekly active users, achieving significant profitability, and a valuation that offers multiple attractive exit scenarios. The capital we are raising is not for an experiment; it is to execute a nationwide scale-up of a proven, high-demand solution.

This is a chance to invest in the essential ‘utility layer’ for Nigeria’s digital future. It is an opportunity to back a team that thinks from the customer first, has proprietary technology, has the crucial strategic partnerships in place, and possesses a clear roadmap for execution. We invite visionary investors to join us in building the platform that will connect and empower the next generation of Nigeria’s digital economy while delivering exceptional returns.